At the mont, the surviving villagers of Kattegat and the battered remnants of the Iron Guard were huddled closely around massive bonfires.
Passing around cracked wooden bowls of tasteless flatbread and tough, roasted venison, the n ate in silence.
There were no boastful songs of Valhalla tonight, nor were there drunken claims of glory; there was only the quiet, profound relief of n who had stared directly into the jaws of the abyss and miraculously lived to see the moon rise.
Away from the warmth of the fires, Ragnar and Gyda sat alone on a log near the freezing surf.
Pulling her heavy fox-fur cloak tightly around her shoulders to ward off the biting cold, Gyda stared out at the dark waters. She watched her husband, who was leaning upon his silver-tipped cane.
"Why are we enduring this miserable, freezing exhaustion, Ragnar?" she asked. "We control the beating heart of industry across the narrow sea. We have thirty thousand n clad in uniform steel, ard with repeating crossbows and heavy artillery, comfortably garrisoned in the warm barracks of the Midlands. Why do we not simply send a swift raven to England, summon the full might of the Iron Legion, and end this pathetic Gore-King’s reign before the next quarter begins?"
Ragnar did not answer imdiately, taking a deep breath of the air. He knew his wife was not questioning his courage, nor was she rely complaining about the lack of civilized comforts.
Beneath her pragmatic, numbers-driven exterior, Gyda was terrified. She had watched him nearly vanish beneath a crushing wave of cannibal berserkers.
"You believe I am being needlessly stubborn," Ragnar finally murmured, reaching out to gently clasp her gloved hand in his own. "You think my pride as a son of the North has blinded my strategic judgnt, compelling to conquer this frozen wasteland with a re handful of guards just to prove a point."
"The thought had crossed my mind," Gyda admitted dryly. "I watched you fight in the mud today. You are the architect of a new age, not a disposable footsoldier! If that blast had caught you a second later... Ultimately, you cannot forge an empire if the smith is dead in the snow. Send the ssage. Call the banners, and let us drown this King Erik in a sea of our own iron."
Ragnar offered a bitter smile. "If only the geopolitical board were that simple, my love. If I empty the armories of England and sail the bulk of our forces back to this fjord, we will undoubtedly crush Erik Blood-Tooth in a matter of days. However, the mont our shores are left undefended, the wolves circling our borders will catch the scent of our vulnerability."
Releasing her hand, Ragnar used the tip of his heavy cane to draw a crude, sweeping map of the known world in the frozen mud between their boots.
"Consider our neighbors," Ragnar explained. "The Franks, under Charles the Bald, are bleeding gold in their own conflicts, and they covet the wealth pouring from our coal mines. They have been probing our southern ports for months, waiting for a lapse in our patrols."
He dragged the cane further south in the dirt, drawing a crescent shape. "And what of the Andalusians? The Caliphate?"
"They are our most lucrative trading allies," Gyda countered. "We just secured a massive treaty with Vizier Al-Hakam, trading our Fire-Lances for their raw sulfur and saltpeter. They rely on our foundries."
"They rely on our foundries only so long as it is more profitable to buy from us than it is to conquer us," Ragnar corrected, looking up to et her gaze.
"A rchant’s smile only lasts as long as the heavy iron lock on your treasury holds firm. The Caliph is a man of imnse ambition. If he learns that the architect of the ’Thunder-Staves’ has abandoned his island fortress, taking his thirty thousand steel-clad guards with him, what is to stop the Andalusian fleets from sailing north to seize the ans of production for themselves?"
"Thus, you intended to conquer Norway quietly," Gyda whispered, looking back out at the floating wreckage of the ironclad. "You brought the ship because you believed its re existence would be enough?"
"I did," Ragnar confessed. "I thought the Gyda alone would secure the timber routes, allowing our main army to remain at ho, keeping the Franks and the Andalusians terrified of our borders."
"I did not factor in the cowardly treason of Jarl Hakon, nor did I anticipate a savage king who understood the strategic value of sacrificing his own n to blind ."
Gyda leaned her head against Ragnar’s shoulder.
"Yet, despite your grand geopolitical calculations, remaining here with a skeleton crew is strategic suicide," Gyda stated firmly.
"The Gore-King will not stop until he has mounted our heads on his palisades. If we die on this beach, the Franks and the Caliphate will tear England apart anyway. We must adapt the ledger."
Ragnar turned his head. She was entirely correct. Pride could not shield them from three thousand axes, and protecting England ant nothing if he was not alive to rule it.
"I suppose a slight adjustnt to the logistics is in order. I can recall a specialized expeditionary force. Two thousand of our finest Grenadiers, heavily equipped with experintal siege mortars..."
...
Two days had passed in Kattegat. At the mont, the surviving villagers and the battered remnants of the Iron Guard worked shoulder to shoulder, dragging the corpses of the cannibal berserkers into massive heaps to be burned.
Since the catastrophic explosion of the ironclad had robbed the expeditionary force of its floating fortress and primary armory, their survival now depended entirely on establishing an unbreakable line of communication.
Standing within the sheltered courtyard of the Great Hall, Gyda pulled her cloak tightly around her shoulders as she ticulously inspected a row of wooden cages.
Inside the hastily constructed enclosures fluttered more than twenty sturdy carrier pigeons. So of the birds were the local stock forrly kept by the traitorous Jarl Hakon, while others were highly trained imperial ssengers that Gyda’s quartermasters had fortuitously transferred to the village docks re hours before the ship sank.
"Hold the bird steady," Gyda instructed a nearby guardsman. "The wind over the North Sea will be unforgiving, and we cannot afford a single broken seal."
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